This invention relates to a method of concurrently promoting general oral hygiene in non-human animals, treating periodontal diseases such as gingivitis and periodontitis, killing oral microbes including cavity-causing bacteria, reducing oral biofilms, increasing blood flow in oral tissues, increasing salivation, promoting gingival tissue regeneration, fostering osteogenesis in the boney structures of the teeth, mouth and related areas, treating systemic diseases associated with oral bacteria, and treating other periodontal and oral maladies through the non-invasive application of weak direct current electricity to the surfaces in the oral cavity, and it also relates to an apparatus suitable for providing direct current electricity for these therapeutic, prophylactic, and regenerative effects.
Periodontal disease has been identified as a risk factor for various systemic diseases by dentists, physicians, and veterinarians. Included in these diseases are cardiovascular disease, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and diabetes with newfound evidence supporting its association with pancreatic diseases and arthritis. While many of the studies establish correlation between the presence of periodontal disease and these systemic conditions, causation, with most of these conditions, is still a subject of ongoing research. A few of the biological mechanisms which have been proposed as to how oral bacteria stemming from periodontal disease can cause systemic disease are as followed:
1. Direct effect of oral infections: Oral microbes and their byproducts can gain systemic access via the circulatory system through traveling through compromised tissue and inflamed periodontium in the oral cavity. In gaining systemic access, oral microbes have the potential to directly influence subclinical mediators of various systemic diseases.
2. Inflammation: People with periodontal disease have elevated levels of systemic inflammatory markers due to the burden of increased levels of oral bacteria. Treatment for periodontal disease has been reported to decrease systemic inflammation levels.
3. Cross-reactivity: The progression of systemic diseases can be accelerated by the immune response to bacterial heat-shock proteins creating antibodies that cross-react with innate heat shock proteins expressed on cells of the damaged tissues.